This post is written as an advice to Scopely, creators of Scrabble Go – we will be looking at one of their competitors, Zynga and see what Scopely can learn from the ad creatives of Words with Friends and from Zynga’s advertising strategies. AdIntel customers gain valuable insights on the competition and its creatives and mention that this is the most valuable use case.
Scrabble Go
Scrabble Go is a new entrant into the word games domain. Scopely’s new hit made it to the #1 spot in the iOS charts. This is a mobile app take on the classic Scrabble game and it’s the first one with the IP rights to use the original board and tile designs.
While Scopely is off to a good start with Scrabble Go they are entering an occupied space. Zynga has dominated the Scrabble space with it’s Words with Friends series. Let’s see how Scopely can turn this threat into an opportunity to learn.
Words with Friends 2
The latest Sequel in Zynga’s Words with Friends Series. This game enjoys a massive fan base and monetizes with both IAP as well as in-app advertising.
Words with Friends 2 has better IPM
While Scopely are having success with Scrabble Go there seems to be room for improvement. Specifically, according to the AdIntel platform, the IPM of Words with Friends 2 is better than the one of Scrabble Go.

The higher IPM is usually an indication of better creatives. Let’s see what can be learned from Zynga’s creatives.
Ad creatives for Words with Friends 2
Out of all the creatives detected by AdIntel for Words with Friends Android, here is the one with the highest CTR.
This video features no gameplay but instead shows a pen and pencil experience of someone trying to come up with all the possible words that can be made out of a plate of letters.
Scrabble Go Ad Creatives
Let’s see Scopely’s top creative for Scrabble Go so we can compare. Here we are looking at a video with 2 main elements. We can see the gameplay itself and an avatar that seems pleased with its performance in the game. Here is the full experience.
Channels – what have we missed
This table in AdIntel shows which channels are being used by each of the games. We can see that while Scrabble Go marketing team focuses mostly on Admob, Zynga was able to get Words with Friends 2 going on UnityAds. From Scopely’s perspective, it might be a good idea to explore UnityAds a bit more and possibly give it another chance.

Country analysis
Here we can see what countries are being targeted by each game.

Both games seem to have success in US and UK. What’s interesting to see is that Scopely has yet to try Australia and Italy. Potentially there is something there as Zynga does advertiser in these countries.
See the process in our latest video:
Learn from your competitors
When working in a crowded market, competition is inevitable. The companies that can learn from their competition and leverage it to improve themselves are the ones that thrive. If you want to make your creative teams 2x more effective you should try AdIntel. It is free for 7 days with no credit card required.